


Everything After

by meholstein



Series: Watch Mark Watney Live [3]
Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:20:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10038086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meholstein/pseuds/meholstein
Summary: Mark finally makes it home. This is everything after.





	1. Chapter 1

Mark Watney  
Day 1

I lay on my back, and watched the cloudless blue sky, feeling tear tracks dry on my face.

It’s pretty cold, so the rest of them are staying in their too-warm spacesuits like a bunch of babies. But nothing in this god forsaken universe can ever make me put on a spacesuit again, so I lay on the ground and shiver as the hot sun provides a thin blanket of warmth on my skin.

“There’s NASA,” Martinez said, pointing off in the distance.

The NASA entourage is just a series of dots on the horizon, and it will take them a few minutes to get here.

I’m privately thankful of the delay, because I know once I’m thrown in that hospital that there’s no escape.

I scratch my fingertips against the dirt, nails pulling at roots underneath the ground. Enjoying it while I can. I can feel the moisture in the ground.

I fought for three years to get back to the roots underneath this dirt, and of course after only ten _minutes_ I’m going to get thrown in an ambulance.

But even if it’s only ten minutes -

(I feel the sun beating down on my skin)

\- it was worth it.

“What am I supposed to do with my life now?” I asked, wondering at the sky.

“Whatever you want,” was Martinez’s sugary, lewd reply.

“Martinez, I’m serious. I thought I was gonna die.”

Beck, the resident psychiatrist for not much longer, piped up. “When you think you’re going to die, your future sort of closes off in your mind. Think about how Watney must feel, when for almost 549 days he was sure it was over.”

No one spoke for a moment, the atmosphere heavy.

“We can make plans,” Johanssen piped up. “You were always dragging us to go do shit with you, we can drag you out now.”

“I’m glad your mothering won’t stop just because we’re on a different planet,” I quip.

My heart cracks at their words; they’re with me now, but who knows how long it will take everyone to move on. I’m being tossed in a hospital like a museum piece while everyone else moves on with their lives.

The sun is still beating down on my skin. The air in my lungs is fresh and cold; it’s been so long since I’ve breathed air this cold that my lungs are stinging. Mars is a freezing inhospitable wasteland, but the only air I breathed was the wonderful temperature controlled air of the Hab, suit and the Hermes.

“Earth is so free, you know?” I say. “You can just go anywhere you want without hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. Look at us, just _outside_ without suits on.” I wave my arms around in the air for effect.

I looked up at the sky again. I feel the air against my skin. Cold, not temperature controlled. There’s nothing between me and the endless violent expanse of space.

I look up at the clear sky, nothing between my face and it. I’m laying flat on the ground, looking at the sky.

My hand comes up to my face. Just skin against the cold air. Just me, tiny me in this gigantic open field. It’s enormous.

I’m not wearing an EVA suit.

Fuck -

“No, no,” I say, sitting and hunching over. “Not now.”

“Mark?” Lewis asks.

“Oh, I’m panicking, that’s all,” I pant, staring at the dirt. Now all I can see is brown dirt and sad little grasses in the cold. But hey, there aren’t sad little grasses on Mars. Look at those guys.

“Why? They’re almost here,” Martinez says, pointing at the much larger cars. “You’re home safe. On Earth.”

I continue to look at the dirt ground, pulling at my hair like I always do, the pain grounding me where I sit. If I just pull my hair enough I can forget that my chest is caving in.

“It’s the sky,” I say, there’s nothing between me and the sky. “I’m not wearing an EVA suit and I’m outside…” Oh look, I’m panting, for _no fucking reason_ \- “I guess my body thinks I’m gonna die." 

I studiously look down now at the yellowed grass, studying the roots between my feet. Focus on the grass. And it is weird, seeing the green wild grass against the unnatural blue of the NASA jumpsuit.

“Would it make you feel better to get back in the EVA suit?” Lewis asks.

“I’m never getting in an EVA suit again,” I say roughly.

Martinez shrugs in my direction. “I don’t know what you want us to do, man.”

“You know there isn’t anything to do,” I huff, shaking on the ground. 

-

Mark Watney  
Day 1

Unsurprisingly, as the car approached, it turned out to be three or more cars, and then twenty, and then media and press people about a hundred yards behind them.

“No press!” Lewis shouts across the field. Nobody wants the first story to be ‘Mark Watney returns and he’s completely out of his fucking mind.’

NASA gets the message, and several people wave, and a few of the cars peel off and idle far behind.

I stand up on my feet, shaky, because if I’m collapsed on the ground they’ll be able to see even from that far away.

As the rest of the cars get closer, I can make out the people in them. My mom, and dad, and Venkat, and Teddy, and Marissa and Robert and Helena and Dr. Shields and Annie and Mindy, who I know from photos.

The first people to walk up to us were the cleaned medical professionals, dressed in scrubs with masks. Like the report said, the only people who really get to come near us are the clean medical professionals because we’re all immuno-compromised.

My eyes spot my mom and dad, ten meters behind them

I’m running before I realize what I’m doing.

My mom is right there, right _there_ , my dad and mom are _right there_ -

A doctor sticks his hand in my chest, stopping me dead.

“You can’t get within ten meters of anyone who’s not scrubbed,” he says. “It could be fatal.”

Against his hand, I can feel that I’m shaking like I’m running from a grizzly bear, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m crying again.

I look at this doctor uncomprehendingly.

“Why aren’t they scrubbed?” I ask. My voice is thick and desperate and I don’t care. 

“They’re not trained medical professionals,” one of the doctors says sadly. “They could compromise you.”

My mom is yelling at me, even though she’s not that far. “We can hug after you’re better!” I can see she’s crying, too, and that makes me feel better.

“Where’s Buzz?” I yell back, tears working down my face.

“They were worried he’d fight the leash!” She yelled, laughing.

They both looked older, faces more lined, hair far grayer.

_I did that to them._

It’s a new point of shame, but it settles in nicely next to everything else I have to feel guilty for, icy and cold and horrid.

My throat tears again.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out.

“Mark, we’re just glad you lived!” My dad yells back, and I see he’s crying too.

The doctor turns to me. “Dr. Watney, we need you to get in the ambulance.”

It’s then I notice the flashing of cameras, about a hundred meters away. About thirty reporters are all piled in a line in the distance, taking pictures and scribbling in their notebooks.

I look around, and we’re all doing the same thing, yelling across the distance to our families while doctors try and herd us into six ambulances. Lewis is talking to Robert and Teddy instead of greeting Robert, though, because apparently even now NASA has some administrative bullshit to take care of.

I look back at my family.

“I wish I could just come over there and hug you,” I say, my voice wobbly. 

“We can see you in the hospital!” She yells back. “Once you’re in the clean room they’re gonna let us scrub up and see you.”

Happiness blooms in my chest. “Why didn’t you say so?” I yell.

I turn to the doctor. “Let’s go.”

He sighs, exasperated, and herds me into the ambulance where several more doctors were waiting.

“Dr. Beck appraised us of your condition routinely,” they were saying. I knew that. “He told us of your anxiety, PTSD…” they started listing my problems, first mental, and then listing off the various physical things that were wrong with me. I don’t care, I tune them out. 

I gazed out at the horizon still visible from the back of the ambulance. I’m trying to take in the sight of Earth, because who knows when I’ll be able to see it again, not trapped behind glass walls. 

The doctor bending over me right now and inserting an IV is cute, blonde hair flowing over her shoulders and bright blue eyes. “Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” I flirt with her. It’s instinctual, and really, I’m surprised I still have that instinct.

Look at me, _flirting with someone_. Haven’t done that in a while. Didn’t think I’d ever get to do that again.

She smiled, laughed, and says “You aren’t too bad yourself, Dr. Watney.”

“I appreciate the effort, but I know that’s not true,” I laugh. I am loads better than I was when I was rescued, but I still look a bit deranged and skeletal.

The ambulance doors slam shut, and my heart rate spikes, reflected by the beeping on the monitor connected to my fingertip reader. 

“We were told of some possible claustrophobia, so I’m giving you some benzodiazepines to help make this ride back more pleasant for you,” she says gamely.

It’s not from claustrophobia, or some anxiety disorder. It’s from knowing that even though I’m Earth, I’m never going home.

They slide an IV in me, and immediately I’m filled with the alien calm of benzos. Sure, it was better than freaking out, but being on a bunch of benzos is always weird all on it’s own.

It turns out that it’s good she did that, because a second later the car engines all roar to life. They aren’t that loud, but ambulances are big and there’s dozens of cars in this motorcade and it makes a loud roaring noise just like a booster engine. Without the benzos, I’m sure I would have flung myself from the ambulance. Turns out on earth, you can’t get everyone to tiptoe around your triggers.

I spend the rest of the ambulance ride a little high and staring at the ceiling of the ambulance. One of the doctors is nattering at me about something, but I’m not listening. I’m just feeling gravity pulling me down. Real, non-simulated gravity from earth. 

-

Mark Watney  
Day 2

The ambulances took us to a plane loaded up with medical equipment, which took us to an ambulance, which took us to a hospital in Houston. I’d recount the hijinks of being on the medical plane, except that it was just the six of us and a bunch of doctors, and to keep me from freaking out and tearing apart the plane because of the noise of the engine and pressure, they had to keep be so drugged up I could barely speak, so I don’t remember a lot anyways.

I’m finally sobering up from all the benzos they gave me on the ride here, which has me strung as tightly as a guitar. It doesn’t help that the hospital is loud and busy, with beeps and boops everywhere I turn, like all the alarms on the Hab are going off at once. It never bothered me there, but now it bothers me here, _way too much._

At least in this, I’m not alone. The rest of the crew is standing around me, and they all look equally anxious from the noise.

“It’s the beeps, isn’t it,” I mumble to them.

Lewis nods. “Alarms.”

They’ve left us standing here with a wide berth while a veritable army of doctors scrub up to set us up in our cleanrooms. Yes, _our_ cleanrooms. We have six adjacent glass cleanrooms, and if we look through the walls we can see everyone else through them. I don’t know if they were set up specially for us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, because what other cleanroom patients would want to see each other through the walls?

The airlock flushes on one of the cleanrooms, and my heart drops to my stomach.

By now I know that my panic attacks have three levels of escalation. The first is when I put my hands flat against a table to steady myself; the second is when I start wringing them together to hide the shaking, and the third is when I collapse on the floor, sure I’m going to die of a heart attack. The whoosh of the clean room air flush sends me straight to the third.

“Fuck,” I say, winding a hand in my hair and pulling it, shamelessly sitting down on the floor.

Johanssen looks over at me. “What?”

“The airlock,” I say, pointing at the offending cleanroom. “Fuck, I have to live with that.”

“At least it’s a lot shorter than the airlock on the Hab,” Lewis says. “That thing took fucking forever.”

She’s right; the normal airlock preserved air and liquefied it, meaning it sounded less like whooshing and more like an agonizingly long mechanical groan. No, this sounds more like when the airlock tore, when all the air rushed out of the container at once -

“Fuck,” I say, as it happens again. “I have to live with this.”

And isn’t that the kicker? I have to live with this. I have to live with all of this. I have to live with the sound of engines that remind me of riding an exploding convertible rocket and I have to live with whooshing noises that sound like a torn airlock and I have to live with the sound of the wind against this building that sounds like the beginning of a sandstorm. Piled on top of all of that are the voices of dozens of people speaking and instead of being comforting like it should be, it’s busy and agitating and I can’t make out what they’re saying (just like I couldn’t before).

My heart is banging wildly against my chest, and it’s taking everything I have not to curl up on the floor right where I am and rock back and forth like I’m Certifiable.

This is shaping up to be harder than even I expected it to be.

Vogel says what I was just about to think. “At least you haven’t had a flashback yet.”

Despite the hopelessness of my situation, I grin.

“Wow, Vogel, always cheery,” Martinez says sarcastically.

“It actually is cheery,” Lewis says.

The lady doctor who picked me up is standing in front of me again. I dimly remember being told in my drug induced haze that she’s my attending. “We’re ready for you, Dr. Watney,” she says primly, pointing to the farthest cleanroom.

Incidentally, it’s also the one that keeps whooshing.

I want to wait, I don’t want to walk into that whooshing noise that is going to lock me in another box. This time my box is tinier, smaller, with no food except the food people bring me and only one tiny window that looks out on a parking lot. 

It must have showed on my face, because Beck said “It’s only for two weeks, Watney, it’ll be okay.”

You know, if I’d killed myself, I wouldn’t have to do this. Because it’s pathetic, having to shore up all your strength just to walk through a hospital airlock. 

I swallow, and follow her. They take off my gown that got put on at some point on the plane, and put me in a chamber in the center. Since I know it’s coming, I dig my nails into my palm so hard it bites, and that’s how I don’t curl up on the floor when all the air is recycled.

It’s over, I put on a new gown, and step into the room.

From the inside, it looks bigger. It’s only got a TV, a bed, a chair, and an IV hookup in it, but the bed is _huge,_ like a supersize twin, half of a King bed. There’s a door behind the door I just walked in from, and I bet there’s a tiny bathroom shoved in there.

I sit down on the bed, and the first thing I notice is that I sink into it like it’s made of mush. I can’t decide if I like it or not, but I’m not tired anyways, so I sit on the mush bed. Through the window, I can see everyone else getting ferried into their rooms. I’ve got the room on the far left, with Beck next to me, then Johanssen, then Lewis, then Vogel, then Martinez.

After a little bit, the commotion of getting everyone settled winds down. I’ve backed up against the back of my bed and pulled my knees up under the blanket, and I’m thankful that no one is really paying me a second thought right now because I’ve still got a pretty healthy dose of anxiety thundering through my veins. But between the benzos still sort of in my system and the fact that this room is soundproof, I’m slowly calming down.

Watching the people run back and forth in front of my window-wall, all I can think is that I hope someone gives me a damn laptop and some entertainment. If they don’t, I’ll accuse them of being worse than Mars.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 2

The sight of something orange makes my eyes bleed.

I haven’t seen anything orange since getting off of Mars. The Hermes is all blues and whites, and thank God for it, because whenever I thought I was on Mars I came back to sanity greeted by the blue lights of the Hermes and the blue on the walls and the blue of the NASA issued clothing. 

This damn hospital, though, it’s orange. No, it’s yellow, really, but the old yellowed incandescent lights shining on the old yellowed tiles makes everything look orange and sad. That’s what the martian sun did; it bleached everything orange, so orange that not even the blue NASA Hab and the blue LED lights could make it blue again.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 3

At some point while they were situating everyone I fell asleep, and no one thought it was worth it to wake me up.

I’m a little cross about it, but it’s no big deal. My body must be barely functional after all the excitement of the MDV, and they probably thought not waking up would be in the best interest of keeping me alive. I didn’t have any dreams, presumably from all that excitement.

There’s a set of blinds between panes of glass, and someone has pulled my blinds shut, so my room is comfortably dark and quiet. After yesterday’s two - three? - Panic attacks, I’m thankful for a dark and quiet corner to just lay in for a moment. Sure, my muscles won’t unwind, but half-wound is better than alarms-blaring panic attacks.

My next thought is that I’ve decided I don’t like this mush bed. I thought Earth beds would be amazing, but it’s too soft and now my back feels thrown out like I’ve been sleeping in a crappy hammock all night. People consider hospital beds hard and unforgiving. I can’t believe I ever lived like this.

The Hermes kept time on UTC, and Houston is UTC-6, so when this clock says 9:13pm that means it’s 3:13am in UTC, which means at this time everyone on the Hermes would be asleep and I’d be up skulking the hallways or staring at Martinez with that belated expression. It feels so far away.

I’ve been on Earth less than 24 hours, and already life on the Hermes feels so far away. I remember this feeling from being rescued; the feeling that the life before is so far away, in a different universe.

I also remember what comes next. First is a few nights of good sleep and good food and good mood, and then it all comes tumbling down like a house of cards. I know the score this time. The crew gets cleared, they go home, and I’m left in a hospital or outpatient or whatever alone for the rest of time.

The words echo in my mind. _Alone. Alone. Alone. Alone._

I look up at the ceiling. There’s a vent that would probably bear the weight of a man. One of gravity’s many uses is for hanging things. Is this going to be my life now? Scoping out every living situation to figure out how I could kill myself?

I roll over on the mush bed, and the whole process is painful and achy. Between the mush bed and the full-time 1g gravity, I feel like I got rolled over by a tractor. I can’t get comfortable, either, feeling like my back is sinking into a mud puddle.

After spending years fantasizing about earth beds and earth rest and earth life, this is a bitter disappointment. The bed is mush, my parents went home, and it’s dark and empty and I’m alone, just like before.

My chest crushes inward as I sink into the bed.

The sound of cars driving along the hospital roads is slightly audible through the building walls. The sound of footsteps and activity is audible through the glass panes. These are good things.

I fall asleep, holding on to that.

-

Mark Watney

A doctor is sitting across from me on a rolling chair. He’s wearing an EVA suit. “We can’t let you leave this room,” he’s saying. “Your body is too damaged from Mars. You won’t survive.”

I sit up ramrod straight. “You’re saying I’m stuck here?!" 

He holds his hands up patiently. “We brought a few things from Mars to make it feel more like home,” he’s saying. He rolls over my tray from the Hab, with all my cups and utensils and potato plates. With the crew gone, I got to use all their coffee cups at once.

“We also thought this might feel more like home to you,” he says, pointing to the window.

I look out the window at the orange sky.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 4

I’m sitting up in bed gasping for breath before I even know I’m awake.

“Dr. Watney, are you all right?” A nurse asks through the comm.

I look out the window at her concerned face. “Yes, I’m fine,” I say, but I’m not fine, part of me is still sure that if I turn and look out the window, I’ll see Mars.

I turn. The sky is blue out the window.

“We’ll have someone bring you some food,” the nurse says. I nod, but she doesn’t notice.

The food they bring me is mush. It’s not potatoes, which is great, but it’s still mush.

I push the food around my plate. Earth is a huge disappointment. No, I’m pretty sure I’m the disappointment. Any non-disappointing person would be thrilled.

About ten minutes after I finish eating the reconstituted oatmeal or whatever, I get queasy.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 4

Now what’s killing me is the family.

I can see Marissa across the hall, Martinez’s parents, Helena and the kids, Robert and both their families, Beck’s sister and Johanssen’s parents all standing out their windows. None of them are paying a lick of attention to me, they’re all taking turns going in and hugging their family. Not that I want the attention. I do not want the attention. In fact, I’d like to cram myself into a corner of this room and fade out of existence, because the only reason they need to have this happy reunion _at all_ is because I went and got myself stuck on a foreign planet and needed rescuing.

“Mark?” my mom says, and I startle. My parents are here, and I’m thrilled because I missed them so much, but the Mark that missed them is MIA, and the Mark that’s here is the one that doesn’t feel anything except crushing guilt.

“You’re jumpy,” my dad observes from behind the glass. Only one family member at a time.

I laugh with no humor. “Yeah, I’m kind of a wreck.”

My mom smiles, all warmth. “Dr. Beck told us a little, but didn’t want to breach doctor-patient confidentiality.”

I roll my eyes. “That was nice of him, but he should have known I wouldn’t care if you know. Here’s the short version: Turns out being alone on an entire planet totales your brain, and now I’m a basket case.”

“Don’t say that,” my mom says, patting my chest as if she were fixing a tie. “PTSD is a legitimate illness.”

The worst thing about depression is the way the sadness makes you feel like you’re swimming in mud. I’d like my mom to hug me again, but the mud is too thick and all I can do is stand here lamely. I hope she hugs me. Please, mom, just hug me like I’m a 9 year old who’s crying because they scraped their knee.

“We’re so proud of you,” she says, patting my cheek. I lean into the touch. It’s warm and inviting and I am so, _so_ tired.

Tears leak out of my eyes.

“Mark?” my mom asks.

I want to sob in her arms, but instead of flowing freely, the tears get caught somewhere in my chest and turn into ripping pain.

She puts her arm around me despite my lack of reaction, and I lean into her. I want to cry, crying would tell her how I feel, but my body won’t let me, all it will do is punish me with this shredding. What’s it trying to tell me, that I don’t get to take comfort in her? Maybe I don’t, because I put her through all this shit in the first place. It would have probably just been kinder to die, right in the sand.

The attention seeking part of me wants to tell her about that day. 

“I’m sorry you had to go through this, mom,” is what I say instead, and those words come easily.

Now she’s crying, and I feel like shit for making her do that. “My brave boy,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

“We love you, son,” my dad’s voice says through the speakers. “You know I’d be in there if I could. 

She called me brave, and I tuck that into my heart in the corner where I keep the good things people say. .I’ll come back to it later, when the warmth can reach me, because right now it feels too cold and far away.

I’m so tired. There’s just one thought, over and over. _I’m so tired. I want to go home. I can never go home_.

“I’m just so tired,” I say thickly.

My mom hugs me. “You can rest here.”

That just makes me cry even harder, because I can’t, I _can’t_ explain to them how earth isn’t home anymore, because even on earth all my joints hurt and I can’t get enough sleep and I still jump at every noise like death is coming for me. Mars broke my brain, turned a happy and relaxed person into a basket case who can’t find rest even when he’s drugged up with sedatives.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 4

You know, it was only a matter of time before this happened. 

-

Chris Beck  
Day 4

“Mark!” Beck yells, hand on the speaker that connects to Watney’s room.

Watney is on the floor, curled tightly in a ball with his eyes wide open, shaking hard, and Beck can tell from extensive experience that he is somewhere else right now, reliving something nobody had any business living in the first place.

He switches to the hallway, and yells into the comm. “Someone get in there and help him! Just touch him or _something_ , tell him where he is!”

Nurses are already moving (because they heard the beeps and alarms from his vitals), but it takes ten to fifteen minutes to prep to go into a cleanroom _that_ clean, and Beck knows that if he goes ignored that long it will be the full forty five minutes before he climbs back into reality. 

“Mark,” he says again, switching to the other speaker. “You’re on Earth, in a hospital. It’s okay. Come on, look out into the hall, you can see tons of people,” he’s saying.

Watney is giving absolutely no indication he can hear Beck.

Beck thumps his head against the glass dejectedly. The sound startles Watney, and he tightens even further into a ball.

“It’ll be okay,” Johanssen says from the next room over. “It’s going to be okay.”

Beck just stays staring at Watney. If this is going to be Watney’s quality of life for the foreseeable future, he knows it’s not going to be okay. Maybe his next room wouldn’t be a clean room, but his next room would be a locked hospital ward with the same sterile far away doctors and the same sterile far away care.

The image of Mark with his hand on the airlock lever flashes through his mind. _“- I’m not adjusting, it’s not going away, it still hurts every day -”_

“He can’t go to that inpatient facility,” Chris says. “Beth, he has to come home with us.”

Beth’s eyes are trained on Mark, too. “I know. We can’t just send him away.”

The nurses have swelled into Mark’s room, and all the activity and urgency seems to be upsetting him further, his heart rate still climbing. They sedate him, stabbing benzos into his IV (Everyone cringes as they do) and then carry him over to the bed.

Theoretically, that will stop his suffering, but Chris thinks that all that will happen is that he’ll be trapped in a nightmare instead.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 5

I’ve been back for 5 days, which is apparently enough for me to get back out there, because NASA scheduled me for a public statement.

It’s supposed to be short. A reporter comes in, I give a pre-planned five minute speech thanking all of humanity for saving little old me instead of using six billion to feed Africa or something more important, reporter gets out. Annie sent me some ridiculous script over email, and she’s meeting with me today to “assess my condition” and train me for the statement.

I may have given up on the concept of dignity with the Hermes crew, but I’m not giving up on Earth, so instead of curling into a ball like a big baby when the airlock activates, I grip the sheet with my hands and try to act like a cool customer.

“What’s got you all wound up?” Montrose says after she appears through the airlock. I do appreciate that about Montrose; she doesn’t beat around the bush.

“Being abandoned on Mars,” I say dryly.

She shrugs. “Well we went back and got you, so get over it.”

I snort. “So this statement,” I say.

She nods, rearranging her hospital gown. They like to have people in the same room with me if they have time to go through the airlock, something about socializing me back to humanity. “Yeah, a statement,” she says. “Look, here’s the deal. NASA is trying to pretend to the world that you came back in the same condition that you left. This statement is about proving that.”

“But the videos are released,” I say. “They know exactly how I am.”

She shook her head. “No, not really. They only released the fun science videos, not the ones of you losing your gourd.”

My face is sour. “I take it you’ve seen all of them.”

Her tone is all business, “Of course,” But something in her eyes expresses remorse, a genuine human emotion. “Anyways, in terms of the news cycle, that’s like, ancient history. You’re back, and you’re all healed up, ready to explore space another day.”

I know that Annie doesn’t determine public opinion, that this isn’t even Annie’s call, but the whole thing pisses me off. “Ancient history my ass,” I say.

She sits up, and looks at me witheringly. “Will you do it?” She asks. “I can’t just make you anymore, because NASA can’t hold the threat of firing you over your head.” She sighs heavily. “If it were anyone else, Watney, I wouldn’t be telling you this, but frankly, we’re totally at your mercy.”

I can feel my face purse, and I look at the wall. I love the feeling of NASA being at my mercy, and I know that never again will I have the whole of NASA at my mercy. But the exhilaration fades quickly, because they’re not the ones in the wrong here, I am. And if I act like anything less than perfect, space exploration funding will be cut, and there’s no greater crime than that.

“Of course,” I say.

Something in her posture visibly unwinds.

“Nervous?” I ask gamely. My chest is crushing in again, and I’ve gotta act like it’s definitely not happening at all. At least on Mars, if I wanted to have a breakdown, I could just have a breakdown. Hell, even on the Hermes I basically could break down whenever I wanted… but not here. I fold my hands together, intertwining my fingers to hide the shaking. 

She shrugs. “A little, yeah. They tell me that you’ve lost your mind, and that politically, the fate of NASA rests in your hands. It’s enough to make anyone nervous. If it’s any consolation, though, you don’t look like you’ve lost your mind to me.”

Ha ha, Montrose. That’s hilarious. “Give it time. So what’s my statement?”

We spend the next hour reciting the statement over and over, with her coaching me about the right way to sit, how sick to look, how pathetic to look, look tired but not _too_ tired, mention how much I love space, and otherwise how to tug at the heartstrings of America.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 5

I _need_ to go outside.

It’s just taunting me, this window that overlooks the side of another building and a god damn parking lot, with that patch of green grass over there. It’s a patch of real grass, outdoors grass outside in the outdoors I can survive in, outside. The grass is green, the opposite of orange.

Sometimes I touch the window. It’s cool on the inside.

I wonder if it was real. I remember being outside, laying on the ground, looking at the sky, but the memory is so blurry and light and confused, I might have been high. Was it real?

The window glass is cool against my hand. I’m so confused, my memories are a blur. This room is orange and it has an airlock but out there is a green patch outside and I want to go to it.

The grass is green. Maybe we need suits to go out there, but there are people walking to their cars without a suit. Can I do that too?

There’s no EVA suit in here, so it’s me, in this airlock, and the green out there.

Eventually I back up against the glass wall, and in a chair facing the window. My vision narrows to that green spot that I can never reach.

Yes, Mark, you can, all right? You’re on Earth, remember? You don’t need a suit. The grass is real. 

I touch the glass again. I’m just not sure.

-

Crew  
Day 5

Nobody in the hospital notices, but the crew notices, the crew sees the way Watney is staring out the window, and they recognize the look. Without being able to go into the room and touch him, there’s nothing they can do.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 6 

I spent most of the time in this hospital room laying in bed and watching the wall, or looking at people through the glass. I’ve spent the last several hours staring at the wall, which is why I didn’t notice her until I flipped over on the bed.

Mindy Park is just standing at the end of the hallway, hiding halfway behind a wall.

We’ve been emailing back and forth, and she’s even sent a few pictures, so that I could get a feel for who I’m talking to. We’ve become friends, actually, talked about more than just the business of her saving my ass. She gave me the rundown on what being a Watney Stalker is, told me her favorite food is hot dogs (because they’re easy to store in the fridge) and she threatened me until I agreed to hang out with her once I was back. I was extremely excited to make friends with her.

But seeing her, in real life, changed the game. Seeing her in real life, standing there, captured my attention completely. Suddenly, I’ve forgotten about the pain in my chest.

I jump up, hitting the wall speaker. “You just gonna stand there or what?” She looks like she’s been trying to observe me without being seen.

We still haven’t actually exchanged words, in person. I was nervous about the whole thing, but the feeling triples. “What are you doing here at midnight, anyways?” I ask.

She rocks from one foot to the other like she’s going to leave, and then decides to walk up to the speaker. My eyes never leave her; I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” she said lamely.

“You’re here to watch me sleep?” I say. “Well, you _are_ my stalker,” I mumble shyly. Shyly? Mark Watney isn’t _shy_. It’s like I tried to flirt and lost the courage halfway through.

She shrugs. “I had to make sure you were okay,” she says awkwardly, looking somewhere at her feet. _She had to make sure I was okay._ That settles somewhere in my heart with the collection of good things people have said to me.

“I’m okay,” I say softly.

She snorts. “No, you’re not.”

She’s… wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this, she’s beautiful. Even under these horrid yellow lights. Her hair is dyed that blonde color and she’s got big yuppie glasses, like she makes too much money and she couldn’t figure out what to spend it on. Her stance is nervous, and she’s holding her hands up to her chest, and I want to hold her hands and lower them so she doesn’t hide behind herself.

For a second, I’ve forgotten about the hole in my chest. I just want to hear her talk.

“So what’s going on with you?” I ask. 

Her eyes boggle. “What’s going on with me?”

“Yeah,” I say defensively. “What’s going on in your life?”

She stares at me for a moment.

“Making sure you don’t die of something stupid,” is what she finally says.

I laugh, hard. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, then,” I say. I can feel a stupid grin on my face, and I work to make it a little less stupid.

It’s when I have to work to make my grin less stupid that I know I have a crush, like a fourteen-year-old crush that gives you butterflies in your stomach.

She holds her hands up defensively. “No, my work is done. You’re home, you’re the doctor’s problem now,” she says, shaking her head, blonde hair waving back and forth.

“I’m not home, home is in Chicago,” I say indignantly. Home isn’t really anywhere, really, but that’s neither here nor there.

She raises her eyebrows. “Home planet not enough for you?”

I feel chastised, and butterflies flutter around my stomach. It’s a pleasing feeling, after not having had it for so long. I haven’t been excited about anything in a long time.

It occurs to me, adults don’t get crushes, adults fall in love. And that means I’m falling in love. And that is completely fucking ridiculous, on top of everything else going fucking wrong, because if there’s one thing I _know_ it’s that nobody is going to fucking love me now.

 _Fuck_.

“Earth to Watney,” she says, and I realize I’ve just been standing there staring.

My face reddens, deeply. “Sorry, sorry,” I say hastily. “I’m not great at making conversation anymore.”

She laughs. “Well, I never was, so don’t worry.”

I smile at her, attempting to convey comfort or solidarity or something. I’m not sure the message gets through, because she sort of loses her smile and looks down.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to work, so…” she gestures in the other direction.

“Yeah,” I nod. My mouth is speaking without my consent. “Maybe I could see you again?”

She smiles. “Of course. Being stuck here must drive you crazy.” Then her eyes widened, and she covered her mouth. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I just -“

If anyone else told me I was going crazy to my face, I’d have their fucking head. But I find that I’m not upset with her, just sincerely amused. “Already am, can’t go crazy twice,” I grin. “Go to work!” _Being stuck here must drive you crazy_ , ha ha, you don’t say.

“Going!” she says, smiling and waving me off.

I stand there and watch her leave.

As I turn to sit back on the bed, I see everyone from the Hermes staring at me with idiotic expressions of their own. They must think this is cute. Well, it fucking isn’t.

The last thing I need, on top of all of this, is to be falling in love with someone, some random fucking yuppie who just walked into my life without asking my damn permission. Fuck the fact that it’s my fault it won’t work, because I’ve gone ‘round the bend, and fuck that I can’t do anything about that. So, fuck them for thinking this is anything but fucking awful.

But, as I climb back into bed, I can’t help but hope that she comes to visit again soon.

-

Log Entry  
Day 7

Today, I woke up with a wet cough.

We all knew it was going to happen. Going from three years of clean rooms to the dirty ground of a Russian tundra was going to give me something. And kissing the ground probably didn’t help, although I have yet to hear anyone lecture me about it.

They’ve already taken my blood and stuck tongue depressors down my throat and started me on a barrage of antibiotics; I’ve barely got a cold but they’re drugged me up and IV’d me so much you’d think I have the bubonic plague. But according to Beck, the bubonic plague is pretty easily treatable these days anyways.

The worst thing about this is actually the antibiotics, because they make me nauseous as hell, and that leads me to pushing my food around on my plate and not really eating it.

Beck’s no longer my state approved nanny, but I can still hear his doctorly voice telling me from the next room over to eat my food. I’m not responding, because I don’t want to hear it and there’s really nowhere I can escape to. Beck doesn’t seem bothered by my nonresponse, and now that I’m back on Earth, I’m pretty sure I can go silent for so long that someone would call it selective mutism.

Damn, it takes a lot of energy to be a basket case. Between finding the energy to stamp out panic attacks, the energy to climb out of flashbacks, and all the lost sleep from nightmares, I don’t know where I’m going to find the energy to eat or sleep or do paperwork or shower or all the other crap being alive requires. Maybe I can just hire someone to do most of it with my ridiculous settlement.

-

Melissa Lewis  
Day 8

Lewis is pretty far down their row of glass-wall cleanrooms, but she can still see Watney shivering where he’s curled up on his bed, clearly sick and caught in a nightmare.

 

-

Mark Watney  
Day 9

That wet cough turned into a hacking cough that feels like dragging knives out of my chest.

It turns out all the antibiotics in the world aren’t enough when you’re immune-compromised and happened to pick up a case of _antibiotic-resistant_ pneumonia. This earned me a lengthy doctor lecture about why you shouldn’t tongue-kiss the Russian tundra, but we are so far beyond that point that it doesn’t even matter.

I’m also weak as a kitten, which means I can’t make my secret escape to be outside, even just for a few minutes. I’m sincerely beginning to doubt if outside is even real, or if that ten minutes was a figment of my imagination.

Looking outside the window at the blue sky makes my heart ache. There is just three inches of glass separating me from it, and yet it still might as well be 140 million miles for all the good it does me.

You spent Three Billion Dollars getting me here, it doesn’t cost you anything more to let me go sit outside.

But oh _god_ , if he sits outside he might _die_ , and if Mark Watney the Three Billion Dollar Man dies it’ll be a god damn tragedy.

Being on Earth has mellowed some of my anger, so instead of banging the windowsill and hurting my hand I just huff in annoyance and go sit on the bed. I was angry, am angry, but this is my life and I just don’t have the limitless energy to be angry and throw temper tantrums all the time anymore, especially with a growing case of antibiotic-resistant bacterial pneumonia.

I’m just going to pull these covers up over my shivering body and lay here until I hack a lung out and die or whatever ends up happening.

-

Chris Beck  
Day 10

“How is he doing?” Beck asks, uncomfortable with how urgent his voice is. He has full attorney’s privileges, so the doctor can’t _not_ tell him.

She looks at Watney with a wayward glance.

“He’s doing more poorly than we’d hoped,” she admits. She doesn’t need to say why; it’s easy to see the lack of fight in Watney’s body, thin and tired laying on the bed.

-

Chris Beck  
Day 11 

Mark’s fever is too high, and that makes it all too easy for him to lose touch with where he is.

The moment he sits up out of bed, the nurses are alert, but when he starts ripping his IV and monitors out, they begin to rush suiting up and getting into the room. As soon as a nurse bursts through the airlock, Mark is already to the entrance.

“Dr. Watney, what are you doing?” he asks, putting a hand on his chest.

“It’s okay,” Mark slurs, trying to push past him. “I’m just going for a walk, I need to go out for a walk.”

The nurse shakes his head. “Dr. Watney, you could get sick.”

Mark shakes his head in return. “It’s all right, I’ve got my EVA suit on, I won’t be out long, I need to conserve the filters anyway…”

The nurse pushes him more firmly away from the door. “Dr. Watney, do you know where you are?”

It would seem not, because Mark never responds to the question, just begins to try and shove the nurse out of the way. A second nurse files into the room, and gets on Mark’s other side. “Come on, we’re going to get you back in bed,” she says.

Chris’s heart dropped; he knew that would set him off before it happened.

His eyes flew open, and he began to fight _hard_. “No!” He yelled. “Please let me out of the Rover! I have to get out! Just for a bit! I won’t go far!”

The nurses give up on trying to talk him, now trying to force him into bed. They pull restraints out of their pockets, and they’re soft leather ones, but the sight still makes Chris’s heart sink.

Mark is yelling incoherently now, crying, as afraid as Chris imagines he was on the day he was abandoned.

“It’s okay, Mark, you’re on Earth, you’re in a hospital,” Chris says into the speaker, hoping he’ll recognize his voice. “You’re on Earth, it’s all okay.”

Mark’s head jerks around, and he goes limp in the bed long enough for the nurses to secure him. “What? Beck?”

Yeah, Mark, it’s Beck. You’re on Earth, in a hospital bed. Feel how soft it is; isn’t it a lot softer than normal?”

Panting, Mark’s eyes rove around the room until they land on his bed and his IV line being reinserted. “What?”

“It’s okay, Mark, just listen to me,” Chris says despairingly. “Just go to sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

Mark’s eyes float back to the ceiling. “No I won’t,” he says distantly. “I never do.” Nevertheless, the sedatives they give him begin to take affect, and his muscles slacken on the bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Log Entry  
Day 15

Just as I finally begin to get over my infection, the crew is released. They didn't get sick, which I'm told is due to a combination of factors, one of which is that they were in each other's company the entire time, the second of which is that they did not tongue kiss the Russian tundra, and the third of which is their brains aren’t fucking haywire. Also, they’re not at risk of punching out hospital windows in a bid to escape. 

My comeback was that if I'm trying to escape hospital windows, that might be a sign _to let me fucking go_ , but they don't see it that way.

-

Crew  
Day 15

“Go hug your families for me,” Watney says to the rest of them, who are currently filling out forms and changing into streetclothes. “Eat a burger. Don’t order french fries with it. Go wear nothing but flammable fabrics.”

“I wish you were coming with us, Watney,” Lewis admits. “Seems strange that we’re leaving and you’re not.”

“I won’t be here forever. I’ll be with you guys at the bar before you know it.”

“I am so ready to get drunk,” Vogel says in his thick german accent. “So ready.”

“Stereotype,” Watney says.

But the families are allowed into the hallway, and everyone leaves their isolation chambers and enters the arms of their loved ones.

-

Chris Beck  
Day 15

Chris himself is being embraced by his sister and Beth, and the moment is as perfect as he imagined.

Except, out of the corner of his eye, he can see Mark. Standing there, sick, in his gown, without anyone there to hug or greet. The happy facial expression he had on was gone, and what was there now was something hard and drawn.

Chris breaks apart, says “Guys, come here.”

They all look at him, confused, but as Chris walks towards Mark they understand.

“We’re not leaving you, all right?” Chris says firmly. “Beth and I are buying a condo, and you’re going to move in with us. These guys are coming over all the time, even Vogel, because you would not _believe_ how much we got paid in overtime.”

Mark barked out a laugh, not fooling anyone. “Guys, it’s okay, _go home_. I’m right behind you.”

“Do you think we’re stupid?” Lewis says. “We haven’t forgotten the ride home.”

Mark shifts his balance from one foot to the other, clearly nervous of all the family members standing around them. “Okay, Melissa, I get it. But all of you have families waiting at home.”

“We’re bringing our whole families to visit you,” Rick says, patting his kids’ back. “I’ll make sure they buy a condo with a yard, we can get a playground for the kiddos.”

“Yearly vacations in America do not sound so bad,” Helena agreed quietly, a smile splitting her face. “What do you think, Affen?” she asked her kids.

In agreement, they all grinned cheesy grins, saying “Ja! When can we come? I want to visit him more,” pointing at Rick.

Thank God the kids liked the idea, Chris thought, because they had no idea of the gravity of the situation.

Mark’s still standing on the other side of the glass, stock still, suspicion written all over his face.

Chris feels like he’s been kicked in the chest, back to square one, an outsider all over again.

“What are you waiting for?” Mark says impatiently, his friendly mask snapped back into place. “Go! You’re home!”

“We’ll visit soon,” Beth says, the first to turn away from the room.

Chris is the last to turn away. The entire time Amy drove him home, all he could think about was Mark in that hospital, alone.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 15

As they all turn and file out of the hospital, my heart gets ripped out of it’s chest.

I did a damn good job being happy for them, but I let the mask slip while they were hugging each other, and then they had to come over and do that. Couldn’t they have just gone? I don’t want to hear a bunch of half-promises or things that will never pan out. Just go, _go_ , live your fucking lives. It doesn’t take a genius to see you’re all dying to get out of here… and leave me behind.

Whatever. I knew this was going to happen. This is not some big damn shock. Like I said, I’ll live in inpatient forever if it’s what they need.

- 

Mindy Park  
Day 15

The second time Mindy Park comes around, Mark is sleeping, even though it’s the middle of the day. She means to turn around and go right to the office, but the fact that he’s asleep gives her a chance to stand at the end of the hallway and observe without being noticed.

The stark hospital lights make him look too thin. He’s curled up on the hospital bed, and giant though it is, he looks as uncomfortable as if he were sleeping on the floor. All the life and vigor in his blue eyes is dormant in his sleep.

The last time she saw him, she saw his vibrant blue eyes and the life in his body. It disguised how much he’d been through; but asleep, with pneumonia, it was on display.

She’d only ever seen him in photographs or grainy overhead satellite photos. She pictures this thin frame disassembling a space shuttle, throwing pieces to the ground.

The image rattles her, and she knows that’s not how he’d want people to think of him anyways, so she leaves. Everyone else can be busy having pity for him, but she won’t do it to him.

-

 

Mark Watney  
Day 17

I wake up in the middle of totally unrestful sleep to see the night sky greeting me from the window, and I think I'm on the Hermes. I roll over thinking I'm going to get up and skulk around, but when I'm greeted with the glass hospital walls a bolt of adrenaline gallops through my system and I sit up faster than I can blink.

My body is a bit sluggish to respond to it, though, and my monitors stay stable. Thank god, so the doctors don't notice.

I hunch over, panting hard, staring at the glass. In a hospital, on earth, trussed up like a chicken. Got it.

I look to my right, and see the empty clean rooms. I'm not sure I even know a single person in the building, besides the nurses on my shift and the doctor who stops in sometimes.

The lights are low and and everything’s quiet. Everyone is gone but me. I’m alone, again.

-

Mark Watney

The Hermes is flying away.

I'm in the suit, head poking out to watch the Hermes. I can see them in the Rec room, playing a game of cards. They're having a lot of fun. Johanssen laughs, clearly having won the hand.

They all turn to me, wave as I'm passing by. “Why don't you come join us?”

I can't get over there. I’m stuck in the MAV. I can’t find anything to poke a hole in my suit with, I can’t kick off the MAV to create enough force. I can’t get to them.

My words come out as a scream. “Throw me a rope! I can't come on my own!” They don't hear me. The panic is welling in my throat, ripping a cry from me.

Inch by ragged inch, the Hermes drifts away from me. “Sorry you couldn't make it, maybe another time,” Chris says.

I reach out as far as I can, but the farther I reach, the farther away the Hermes is. My heart is going to beat out of my chest, I breathe nothing but terror.

I blink. I'm alone in space. Nothing but blackness surrounds me. The terror bleeds away into calm. What I feel as I close my eyes for the last time is relief.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 17

I’m not sure that the crew being gone is good for my mental health.

I keep having episodes where I'm skulking, or thinking morose thoughts, or looking out the window, then my memories get confusing and patchy, then suddenly I'm waking up on my bed from anesthetics. Only then do I remember these blurry, confused episodes of being upset or yelling or thinking I'm on Mars or something. The nurses are all conspiring to pretend that it isn't happening, it seems, but I know better.

In a fucked up way, I didn't mind going through this on the Hermes. It always gave someone an excellent opportunity to cuddle with me and pat my head like a dog and reaffirm me, which I will admit to myself that I enjoy. But there's no point to it here, all it earns me is unconsciousness. It's just pure suffering. Not that the suffering is that bad, but that's what this is now. Some kind of pathetic, eked out existence where I just suffer from one day to the next and watch tv in between. If I recall correctly, that’s what Mars was too.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 18

It’s quite a number of days before my illness really clears up. The two weeks in a cleanroom is turning into a long damn time in a cleanroom, hacking up both my lungs. The doctors say that after this clears up, though, my immune system will be strong and mostly ready for the real world, as long as I wash my hands a lot and carry hand sanitizer. The alternative was being in partial isolation for ages, I guess, so I’ll look on that bright side.

-

Mark Watney

Day 19

What would I even do if I could get out of this room? I spend all my time sulking about being trapped in this room (which is about as much fun as the Hab) but I’m not even sure what I would do if I got out. If I were released, right now, with all this money, to do whatever I want… what would I do?

I picture starting a garden, and I like the idea, but I sincerely wonder if I’d actually pull myself off a couch for long enough to do it.

Work on cars? The idea revulses me; I’ve had enough of fixing things that my life depends on.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 19

It’s near the tail end of my stay in the hospital that someone finally asks.

It’s one of the late shift nurses, I can’t remember her name, but she’s black and young with her hair in cornrows and quite pretty and means it perfectly innocently when she says “If… if you don’t mind my asking… what is it like?”

She doesn’t clarify what ‘it’ is, but me and her and the entire fucking world know what ‘it’ is. _What’s it like, being alone on an entire planet?_

This question has given me a bit of thought over the last few weeks. No one on the crew has asked, mostly I think because they sensed that if they asked, I’d have thrown something at them.

Somewhere in the mass of NASA paperwork Lewis gave me was a list of questions I better have an answer for, and this was at the top. I didn’t have an answer for any of them, at all. I still don’t.

So when she asks, my body rattles with the horror of _alone alone alone_ and I mumble “I really don’t want to talk about that,” winding my fingers together in my characteristic sign of _back off_.

She apologizes profusely, quickly backing out, and given the way my heart rate monitor is beeping, I bet she won’t be allowed back in the same room as me again. It’s a shame, because she didn’t do anything wrong - hell, I’m glad she had the courage to ask, instead of treating me like glass. But maybe it’s fair to treat me like glass, when even asking sends my heart rate monitor wild and pins me to this hospital bed from sheer terror.

It’s been months, and still the most anyone has is descriptions of events here or there, my feedback about what was in the uncut video logs, descriptions of what I say when I have a breakdown or a temper tantrum or something. No one’s dared ask me the big questions, like _What is it like being so alone? How did you convince yourself to go on? Why_ didn’t _you kill yourself?_

It’s a good thing no one’s asked, because I can’t answer. I have answers, locked in my brain. On the Hermes, when I tried to let them out, all that happened is I said a bunch of things that didn’t make sense, and then had a flashback when the memories overcame me. But the words are sitting in there like lead, waiting to get out of me. But I can’t, because I know if I try, all that will happen is I’ll say the word _Horrible_ until I can’t say anything anymore.

- 

Mark Watney  
Day 20

The second time Mindy visits me, she doesn’t mill around in the hallway.

“Still got you trapped in here?” she asks brazenly, marching up to my room.

“Sure do,” I say, turning from my laptop to her. “My little slice of paradise.”

She snorts, quietly, like she’s not sure she wants to be that expressive.

Emails to her were easy to write, because they’re long, and you have time to come up with some sort of response. But when people are face-to-face they expect real-time communication, which means I have to come up with something intelligent to say.

“How’s your slice of paradise, NASA?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to ask.

She shrugs. “Ever since you were rescued, I haven’t had anything to do. No more Mark Watney to stalk. They gave me some time off, but now that I’m back they’re trying to figure out what to do with me.”

 _Were rescued_. The words ring in my ears. “Wouldn’t you just go back to your old job?” I ask. “What was that?”

She says one minute, and stomps behind the Nurses table and takes a chair with only a halfhearted attempt at asking. Before the nurses can complain, she’s plunked it in front of my glass wall.

“Brazen,” I say.

She shrugs again. She shrugs a lot. “Working directly under Teddy made me bold. Bolder, at least.”

“Teddy?” I ask incredulously. No one calls Sanders _Teddy_.

She outright laughs. “You should have seen it. Rich comes in, suggesting his maneuver, and he’s explaining it, right - and he’s talking to us like we’re four, making us all be planets, and he asks Teddy his name, and Teddy says ‘Ted Sanders, I’m the Director of NASA,’ trying to be intimidating. I almost shit myself. And Rich just says ‘Teddy. You’re Earth,’ and takes the pen right out of his pocket!”

“Doesn’t Purnell have autism?” I ask unsurely. “Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“He definitely didn’t. It’s not funny because Rich has autism, it’s funny because everyone keeps calling Teddy _Teddy_ and asking his name now,” she says, cracking up. “Mitch even calls him Earth now. Seriously, next time you see him, ask him what his name is.”

I laugh, because admittedly, the idea of ‘I’m so accomplished’ Teddy Sanders being treated like a nobody cracks me up. Sanders isn’t a mean guy, but he clearly takes pride in the fact that he can make people shit themselves.

“Haven’t you heard? NASA abandoned me on Mars. I could probably call Sanders anything I want and get away with it. What are they gonna do? Fire me?”

“All the more reason!” Mindy laughs. Her laugh is loud, and overly-enthusiastic, and I can see how someone might find it annoying but I’m just enjoying that she can find such glee in life. “Ask him, ‘sorry, what’s your name?’ He’ll know instantly.”

“Okay, okay,” I yield. “I’ll harass the Director of NASA next time I see him.”

“Has he even been around?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No. Nobody has, really.”

“You’re kidding,” she says. “You’re fucking Mark Watney.”

I put my hands up. I don’t have any answers.

“He’s probably avoiding you,” she says thoughtfully. “But what about anyone else? Bruce was in town when you got back. Venkat must have stopped by.”

“No one,” I say. “Look, they’re probably just trying to keep my atmosphere calm or something,” I say, to comfort myself as much as her.

I’m back, and now suddenly everyone doesn’t care. My crew is gone, nobody has stopped in for me, and I just feel like a lab rat in a glass box. As I think about it, I realize that the only person who has visited me from NASA is Mindy.

Mindy doesn’t look pleased, though. That gratifies me. “That’s weird. I’d be in here every day if I didn’t think it would annoy you. I spent years staring at your satellite images, I’m not just gonna stop caring because you’re on this planet again.”

The sentence makes me feel a little strange. She just cares about me because she’s already invested so much professional time in me. Something in me was hoping for more than a work friendship (thought there was more) but if she doesn’t feel it, I can’t make her.

Unrequited love is just not something I need right now.

But I miss the feeling of being interested in someone, especially this interested, so I don’t try to send her away. It feels nice to be interested in someone, even if they aren’t interested back. Dopamine, norephenephrine and serotonin are hormones my brain desperately needs.

“Watney?” she asks, and I’m snapped back into reality.

“Wow, sorry,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “I zone out really hard now sometimes.”

She nods, seeming to accept that readily. “That’s gonna bite you in the ass sometime.”

“Already has,” I muse. “Martinez thinks it’s hilarious.”

She snorts again. “I saw those pre-launch videos about the crew, I can only guess.”

“I’ll introduce you sometime. You’ll like him. Or maybe not; his humor isn’t nearly as dry as yours.”

“If you like him, that’s good enough for me,” she says warmly.

We look at each other for a long moment, just taking in the sight of one another.

Too long, it seems, because then it turns awkward.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to it,” she says, standing up and setting the chair aside. “Those satellites aren’t gonna orbit themselves.”

“Yeah they are,” I say, just to be a smartass. “But I’m sure you have some interns to sit on, so go get back at it.”

She smiles, and the smile reaches her pale blue eyes behind her large glasses. Before I can fully appreciate the sight though, she’s turned on her heel and left.

In her wake, I feel a little pointless. Nothing to do but to get back to my thrilling ‘sit around and do nothing, forever’ routine.

 It occurs to me that I wish I could text her, and then it occurs to me that I wish I had a cell phone to do that with. It’s been weeks since I got back, and nobody has given me a texting device. It boggles my mind that this doesn’t even occur to me, either; then again, NASA emails all reports and I’m in the building so they can just come find me directly. Well, that’s not going to work anymore. First thing when I’m released, get a texting device.

-

Mark Watney  
Day 21

“You’re being released today,” the doctor says, wrapping up her bp cuff. “Your vitals have checked out for the seventh day in a row.”

“Released?” I ask. “Wasn’t I supposed to be transferred to the psychiatry department?”

The doctor shrugs. “I don’t know, I just know that we’re authorized to release you to Chris and Beth Beck. 

“‘Chris and Beth Beck!?” I boggle. Are they married? Did they elope? Why didn’t they tell me?! It’s probably because none of us have our texting devices yet. This is a complete racket. I should have been the first to know.

I admit, it’s a good idea, because then they’re jointly my guardians. That’s two people I can harass for things instead of one.

Wait, if I don’t have a phone to let them know, how are they gonna know to come get me?

“I’ve got to call them and let them know,” I say.

“I have a cell phone,” she offers. 

“Shit, I don’t know their numbers,” I say again. They’ve just been dropping in spontaneously until now, and they’ve all had to get new phones too. Why pay for a yearly cell plan when you’re gonna be in space?

“The nurses have their contact information on file, they’ll let them know,” the doctor says. “They’re close by and can be here soon, so let me fetch you some clothes so you can get dressed and out of here.”

She leaves the airlock open on her way out, and it occurs to me that I can just get up and walk right out of it. But I’m wearing a hospital gown right now, so I contain the urge to run up and down the hallway like a twelve year old. What clothes is she even going to give me? All my old clothes are sold and don’t fit me anyways.

When she returns with a plain pair of jeans and a NASA tee shirt, it occurs to me that this is something they thought about earlier.

As I don the jeans, it occurs to me how scratchy these damn things are. Sure, NASA neoprene fire retardant clothes are a bummer, but these cheap jeans that don’t fit right are not fun either. After I buy a phone, I’m going to have to buy a whole new closet. The NASA shirt is a normal cotton shirt, grey with the NASA logo though, so it isn’t too bad.

True to form, they’re here almost immediately. Before they get a chance to greet me, I say “Why am I being released to you guys? 

“We thought you’d surprise you,” Beth says, all smiles. “You’re coming home with us.”

“Coming home?” I ask incredulously. My chest is full of big and hot emotions again, and I’m not sure what all of them are. They’re wearing rings, oh my god, and they have a home that they just referred to as my home too.

Chris smiles widely. “We bought a house nearby. A condo, actually, but it’s like the same thing. You’ve got your own room and everything. You wouldn’t believe our backpay -“

“And we got married, so it’s our house, and everything’s taken care of,” Beth says through teary eyes. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. I married Chris and we got you back home and we’re all home safe and it’s just -“ she starts crying outright where she’s standing in the hospital. 

It’s not long before I cry too, wrapping her tiny body in a hug and trying to help her through her tears. This is supposed to be my happy moment and somehow she’s the one crying.

 But as her tears taper off, mine start to come. They’re hot, and thick, and a lot heavier than the crying Beth was just doing.

“Mark?” she says, continuing to hug me.

I just hold her harder. A home. I’m going to a home. I’m coming home to a home. I don’t want to explain, although I know they understand a little that I was afraid, but this is so big, a home, they’ve given me a room and a home. 

“It gets better,” Chris says. “NASA cleared you to take a trip to your parents for a week, and I thought you and I could go this week, because we’re not totally finished moving into the condo yet.”

I don’t bother saying anything, just crying into Beth’s shirt. We are going to my parents house, _we_ , meaning Chris and I, and it makes me feel better knowing I’m going to have his backup contending with my parents and the outside world. 

Where is the rest of the crew?” I ask, finally letting go of Beth.

“They’re at home right now, but we agreed to have a party as soon as you’re back from your parents,” Beth says. “With the kids and everything, like we agreed.”

“Really?” I ask thickly. I sound like a little kid, but I don’t care.

Chris scoffs. “Yes, really. Did you think we’d forget?”

My silence is awkward, and they realize that yeah, I thought they would. 

Come here,” Beth says again, pulling me closer. “Look, whatever depression tells you, it’s wrong.”

 “PTSD,” I correct, to be a smartass, and because it matters.

“Shut up,” she says, rubbing my back, and I feel better.

 “So, you game to go to your parents house?” Chris asks again.

“Fuck yeah,” I say. I’ve dreamed of my parents house for years. “But first, I need a phone. And some different clothes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As some readers point out, this absolutely does not have my usual level of depth and rigor. I like posting chapters as they resemble complete (so that no one misses out), and then going back and fixing them. Keep an eye out for a revised version of this chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> I write original fiction and nonfiction too! Take a look. (http://eepurl.com/dfSrvL).
> 
> The story I'm currently working on actually uses the same emotional tone and point of view I used here, so if that interests you head on over.


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